Description
Book SynopsisLong neglected by the academic world because of her rejection of belletristic values and resistance to convenient literary taxonomy, Doris Lessing has nonetheless built an international following of serious, dedicated readers.
Trade Review“A tribute to Lessing’s recognized stature and continuing vitality and power to surprise and provoke. The range of response represented in these essays is impressive, and they admirably suggest the development of her work through its many phases.”
Table of Contents* Introduction * 1. Lessing and Her Readers: Celebrating Difference * 2. A Genealogy of Readings * The Seventies * The Eighties * Selected Essays * Doris Lessing: The Politics of Radical Humanism Frederick C. Stern * Subverting the Ideology of Coherence: The Golden Notebook and The Four-Gated City Molly Hite * Ideology and Form: Decentrism in The Golden Notebook, Memoirs of a Survivor, and Shikasta Alvin Sullivan * Teaching Doris Lessing As a Subversive Activity: A Response to the Preface to The Golden Notebook Katherine Fishburn * Memory and Culture within the Individual: The Breakdown of Social Exchange in Memoirs of a Survivor Jeanne Murray Walker * Resisting the Exchange: Brother-Sister Incest in Fiction in Doris Lessing Elizabeth Abel * Doris Lessing: A "Female Voice" - Past, Present, or Future? Nicole Ward Jouve * Doris Lessing's "Debt" to Olive Schreiner Victoria Middleton * Britain's Imperialist Past in Doris Lessing's Futurist Fiction Carey Kaplan * Lessing and Atopia Lorna Sage * Who is It Who Says "I"?: The Persona of a Doris Lessing Interview Eve Bertelsen * Appendix
